We created the first entrepreneurship grants for senior people in Spain: “Dying To Live” Grants. A pioneer program in its essence that would unleash senior people’s vitality by connecting them to the brightest young minds of Spain. An intergenerational program based on a unique personalized mentoring taught by five young entrepreneurs to help people over 60 develop a project and demonstrate that in Spain, we are dying to live.

The grants were founded based on a surprising discovery: age is already the third factor of discrimination ahead of race and sex according to the World Health Organization, also in Spain. In addition, our country is the oldest in the world with the largest population over 60 years old; a fact that will continue to increase within the next few years. What could a brand like Aquarius do to inspire change?

With the help of two of the main reference associations among seniors - Cincuentopía and Jubilares - we launched the registration of the grants in May. In addition, we established a proactive communication of the initiative towards the media through press releases and qualitative appearances (interviews, articles, reports...). In this way, the media also became our loudspeaker. Once we got the 5 finalist projects, during the month of June this intergenerational mentoring was carried out between young and senior entrepreneurs, starting with an initial opening gala to select the couples. To amplify the scope of communication, we brought one of the mentoring sessions to different locations in Spain. This facilitated the regionalization of communication: in Spain, local media have a great impact and reach in the population. This capillarization of the information made it possible to scale the communication of the grants and increase the reach to our interest groups.

Overall, we compiled more than 100 impacts in media both in press and online, radio and television. Most of them were Tier 1 media in Spain, including television (e.g. public national TV program “Aquí Hay Trabajo”) and national radio that do not usually cover actions directly related to such commercial brands. Thanks to the media hook and the social approach of the strategy, it was possible to manage several interviews in a positive tone with direct mention to the brand in the main radio programs of the country: target platform of our PR strategy since it is the preferred medium for our main community, the seniors. Throughout the coverage, a positive tone and a direct mention to the brand have been achieved in all publications, also in CSR and marketing media.

We highlight the appearances and interviews in Tier 1 media such as: interview in “La Ventana”, Cadena SER, the most listened national radio program in the afternoons; 20 minutes interview in public national radio station RNE's program “España vuelta y Vuelta”; mention in Hora 25 (Cadena SER), and two interviews in regional radio station Onda Madrid -when the initiative was launched and when the winners were announced-, among others.

Various reports and interviews about senior entrepreneurs were managed at the regional level, given that their profile made it possible to localize this information: La Voz de Galicia, Diario de Burgos, and Diari de Tarragona. It should be noted that the local media have a great influence in Spain.